E-news letter for Archtecture

MAY 2017

Mark Foster Gage and Patrik Schumacher face off.

Architectural luminaries have spirited discussion on divergent views

Two of the world’s leading architects, Mark Foster Gage and Patrik Schumacher, engaged in a cordial, yet spirited discussion about their sharply divergent views on built environment public policy during an April 21 appearance at Texas A&M University. The event, "Interface," was sponsored by the Department of Architecture’s Thomas A. Bullock Endowed Chair in Leadership and Innovation.

Viz-a-GoGo 24 to showcase student work May 4-6 in Bryan

Viz-a-GoGo 24, the annual showcase of digital wizardry conjured by visualization students from the College of Architecture, will be staged May 4-6, 2017 in downtown Bryan. A screening of student work is set for dusk on Saturday, May 6 at the Palace Theater.

Viz prof-led firm, Texas A&M create $1M department chair

Triseum, an educational video game development company headed by André Thomas, a member of the Texas A&M Department of Visualization faculty and director of the department’s LIVE Lab, has partnered with Texas A&M to establish the $1 million Triseum Endowed Chair of Visualization.

RESEARCH

High school students learn engineering basics in a study led by visualization professor Francis Quek.

Visualization professor heading STEM study in two colonias schools

A group of seven Hispanic high school students residing in South Texas colonias — impoverished, relatively undeveloped villages on the U.S. side of the Texas-Mexico border — learned engineering basics while creating kits for elementary school science experiments as part of a study led by Francis Quek, professor of visualization at Texas A&M University.

Planning professor, Academies seek to reduce urban flooding

A group of scientists that includes Sam Brody, professor of urban planning at Texas A&M, has been tasked by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to learn the causes and extent of the nation's urban flooding problems, a growing concern in the Houston/Galveston region.

Emeritus landscape architecture professor’s book offers new design approach

In his new book, “Landscape Architecture Theory: An Ecological Approach,” Michael Murphy, Texas A&M professor emeritus of landscape architecture, focuses on fostering health and vitality for humans and nature through design.

Viz prof-led firm creates video game aiding calculus students

Students in almost 50 universities are getting help with introductory calculus by playing “Variant,” a new video game developed by Triseum, an educational video game development company led by André Thomas, a member of the Texas A&M visualization faculty.

Report shows construction industry slow to embrace tech

The construction industry is hesitant to embrace technology according to a survey-based study developed in part by Texas A&M construction science faculty members Ben Bigelow and James Benham ’01.

Prof investigating diversity in electrical construction industry

As the electrical construction industry faces a worsening labor shortage, Ben Bigelow, Texas A&M assistant professor of construction science, is busy identifying best practices for attracting and retaining members of two of the industry’s traditionally underrepresented groups: women and minorities.

IN THE STUDIO

A design concept of a RELLIS Campus courtyard by Lilian Kao, one of 14 undergraduate landscape architecture students who created designs in a fall 2016 studio.

Landscape students’ design concepts aim to lure RELLIS staff outdoors

Pleasant gathering and walking spaces, envisioned to create outdoor respite for visitors and staff inhabiting two buildings at The Texas A&M University System’s RELLIS Campus, are major elements in design concepts created by second-year landscape architecture students.

Studios collaborate on Japanese multigenerational mixed-use development

Two Texas A&M design studios came together this spring to experiment with an innovative concept in housing that integrates senior citizens with younger neighbors in what one studio director characterized as a transformative approach to mixed-use development.

Students’ innovative metal skin design earns 1st place in waste museum competition

Yingzhe Duan's design for a Houston museum skinned with sheet metal refuse from automotive manufacturing and conceived to enhance public awareness on the environmental impact of waste, earned him first-place honors in a fall 2016 competition.

Landscape architecture students, faculty earn honors at 2017 Texas ASLA Awards

Master plans by Texas A&M landscape architecture students were recognized with top honors at the Texas chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects’ 2017 Conference in Austin. This year, 28 students and four faculty members received awards.

Students' pet-friendly humane society campus plans ‘break stereotypes, capture spirit’

Texas A&M environmental design students recently showcased building designs and master plan concepts for a 17-acre Aggieland Humane Society campus. The project was conceived to inspire and guide the organization's future planning and fundraising.

ENDS students' Stark Gallery exhibit explored links between geometry, architecture

Environmental design students at Texas A&M explored relationships between geometry and architecture in “The Power of Limits: The Translation From Geometry to Architectural Space” last March at Stark Galleries.

Students’ medical campus designs foster prevention, healthcare, area outreach

Fourth year Texas A&M environmental design students worked with HKS architects to develop several design concepts for a new Frisco, Texas medical campus uniquely designed to advance preventative health and community outreach.

Tactical urbanism garden installation transforms space

A multidisciplinary group of Texas A&M students installed a temporary garden, transforming an otherwise mundane campus space as part of an April 26, 2017 tactical urbanism experiment staged outside of the Langford Architecture Center.

Fabrication lab students build decontamination device to aid rescued animal flood victims

A decontamination unit built by environmental design and engineering student workers at the Texas A&M College of Architecture’s Automated Fabrication and Design Lab was a big help to small animals tainted by recent toxic floodwaters in Texas.

Architecture dept. celebrates excellence at May 11 event

Outstanding achievements in the Texas A&M Department of Architecture will be showcased May 11 at “The Celebration of Excellence,” the department’s public, year-culminating awards presentation and juried competition slated 2-7 p.m. at the Hilton College Station.

ACADEMICS

A scene from Pixar's “Piper,” winner of an animated short film Oscar (Pixar Animation Studios photo) and from Disney's “Zootopia,” winner of the Animated Feature Film Oscar (Walt Disney Animation Studios photo).

Aggie Vizzers help Disney, Pixar earn Oscars for animated movies

From lifelike fur covering the anthropomorphic animal denizens of Disney Animation Studio’s feature, “Zootopia,” to realistic feathers that fluff dry and droop wet on “Piper,” the beachcombing namesake of Pixar Animation Studio’s wordless short, naturalistic textures animated by highly specialized digital artists helped garner 2017 Oscar awards for both studios. Among the creative experts contributing to the films’ success were 15 graduates of Texas A&M University’s visualization programs, and another “Vizzer,” as they are known, who is still pursuing a visualization degree.

Department of Visualization's game design program again ranked among world's best

Texas A&M’s standing as an elite video game design school is reflected in new rankings published by The Princeton Review. The Department of Visualization's graduate and undergrad programs ranked 7th and 11th respectively among public institutions.

College of Architecture students lead conversion of shipping containers to clinics

Four mobile medical clinics now serving patients in remote, impoverished areas in four different nations were built last fall by volunteers led by a team including 24 students from the College of Architecture.

Schools team up for AIA-AAH health facility design contests

Mixed into four multidisciplinary teams composed of students from different schools, four construction science students engaged in an intense, 48-hour competition to design and schedule the construction for a 13,000 sq. ft. rehabilitation hospital.

ACHIEVEMENTS

From left are Lisa English, Matthew Rago, Michael Bruner and Ben Quigley with a screen shot from “Polynesian Panic,” their winning entry in a February 2017 game jam at Kansas State University.

Vizzers' game designs earn 1st, 2nd place in Kansas State game jam

“Polynesian Panic,” a video game that pits a player against rising South Pacific floodwaters, earned its developers, four undergraduate Texas A&M visualization students, first place in a game development contest at Kansas State University.

The contest’s second place award went to “Tubular,” created by undergrad Viz student Daniel Valdez with Eric Buxkemper and Bradley Kern, computer science majors, and Austin Ruff, a computer engineering major.

Two College of Architecture ‘rising stars’ earn Presidential Impact Fellowships

Texas A&M College of Architecture professors Sam Brody and Wei Yan, hailed as rising stars in their field, were among 24 faculty honored as inaugural Presidential Impact Fellows by Michael K. Young, Texas A&M president.

Dean honored for advancing study abroad program

For championing study abroad programs that transform students’ academic and cultural perspectives, Jorge Vanegas, dean of the College of Architecture, received the Dr. Kenneth L. “Rock” Clinton International Study Abroad Education Programs Award from Texas A&M University-Commerce.

Late prof, former CoSci head earns construction group's lifetime achievement award

The late Jim Smith, who elevated construction education at Texas A&M as an administrator and professor, was honored with a posthumous lifetime achievement award by the American Council for Construction Education. Smith died April 20, 2015.

College profs, staffer earn AFS teaching, service honors

For exhibiting the highest standards of excellence in teaching and service, two faculty and one staff member of the Texas A&M College of Architecture received 2017 Distinguished Achievement Awards from The Association of Former Students.

Viz professor earns fellowship for sun-based photo project

An experimental photo project exploring the sun with multi-sensory images and video earned Krista Steinke, an instructional assistant professor for the Department of Visualization, a prestigious fellowship from The Howard Foundation at Brown University.

Trevino garners Women's Progress Award for her work assisting Texas colonias

For encouraging women’s achievement in the workplace and striving to improve female work environments, Laura Trevino, Texas A&M Colonias Program regional director, earned a Women’s Progress Award from Texas A&M University.

Construction Science prof advising international facility management group's board

The board of the International Facility Management Association Foundation, a group that supports educational opportunities for facility managers, is getting advice from Sarel Lavy, Texas A&M associate professor of construction science.

CoSci adviser’s performance earns presidential recognition

Analicia Leiva, an academic adviser for the Texas A&M College of Architecture, recently earned a President’s Award for Academic Advising for expertly guiding the academic trajectory of hundreds of aspiring construction managers and for helping launch a women in construction organization.

EVENTS

A visualization VR exhibit at SXSW.

Viz activation highlights Texas A&M House at South by Southwest

The boundless nature of visualization studies at Texas A&M was celebrated in a visually stunning, interactive exhibition at this year’s South by Southwest, Austin’s giant convergence of festivals showcasing the interactive, film and music industries.

“The Collision of Art & Technology,” an activation orchestrated by Department of Visualization students and faculty, was one of several Aggie-centric SXSW Interactive events on tap at the Texas A&M House, headquartered in the posh Van Zandt Hotel in downtown Austin.

College of Architecture crafts Earth Day Texas installations

Installations created at the College of Architecture’s Fab Lab, defined Texas A&M’s looming presence at the 2017 Texas Earth Day expo in Dallas. Focused on reusable, easily deployable structures and materials, the college’s booth featured student-designed interlocking building modules.

Design, planning consultant delivers 2017 Rowlett Lecture

Betsy del Monte, founding principal of Transform Global, a Dallas-based consultancy that seeks to transform the built environment through planning, sustainability and educational projects, headlined the 2017 Rowlett Lecture.

Archaeologists headline CHC Preservation Symposium

Discoveries by those intrepid scholars who locate and painstakingly unearth ancient and forgotten cultural treasures from locations around the globe were featured at the 2017 Historic Preservation Symposium on “Heritage, Conservation and Archaeology.”

Hackathoners create data-driven concepts for a barrier-free Texas A&M campus

Using their digital and artistic skills, contestants will vied prize money by creating data-sourced concepts for a Texas A&M University campus free of physical and virtual barriers to the disabled as part of the 2017 Diversity Accessibility Hackathon.

Spring lecture series features leading architects, academics

Leading design practitioners and educators discussed topics ranging from ancient Roman cities to the latest innovations in digital design as part fo the Spring 2017 Department of Architecture Lecture Series.

EXHIBITS

A faculty biennial visitor interacts with a piece by Morgan Jenks.

College of Architecture Faculty Biennial Art Show runs through May 14

The College of Architecture’s 22nd Biennial Faculty Art Show, featuring a wide range of artwork created by 23 members of the Texas A&M College of Architecture faculty runs through May 14, 2017, at the J. Wayne Stark Galleries in the Memorial Student Center.

The Biennial includes paintings of West Texas landscapes by Michael O’Brien, professor of architecture, drawings exploring light, shadow and transformation in architecture by Alejandro Borges Gonzalez, associate professor of the practice, an interactive “physics machine” that employs gravity, kinetics and centrifugal force to create random percussive sounds, by Sherman Finch, assistant professor of visualization, and more.

World-renowned Japanese hyperrealist artist paints portrait in Wright Gallery

See a video of one of the world’s foremost hyperrealist painters, Leng Jun, creating a portrait of live model Bailee WIlson in a one-day, public session April 3 in the College of Architecture’s Wright Gallery.

'Blocks' exhibit offers abstraction of Web data, Internet experiences

Artist Brian Piana’s abstract transformations of visual elements, data, and user experiences from the Internet are featured in “Blocks,” a Wright Gallery exhibit running through May 25. Piana earned BED and MS-VIZ degrees in 1997 and 2000.

CLASS ACTS

A photo of scientists in Antarctica by Georgina Davis '15, who penned an architectural history of McMurdo Station, a research facility on the continent.

Former student publishes history of Antarctic science station architecture

In the first comprehensive architectural history of McMurdo Station, a research facility located in Antarctica, Georgina Davis, who earned a Ph.D. in Architecture from Texas A&M in 2015, traces the station’s bygone days from its 1957 founding as a temporary military field camp, to a modern, if spartan, hub for scientists studying the icy continent. Davis’ paper was published in January 2017 by the Polar Record, the journal of the Scott Polar Research Institute.

Two former students elevated to AIA College of Fellows

The American Institute of Architects has elevated former Texas A&M students, Debra Dockery ’75 and Luis Jauregui ’76, to its prestigious College of Fellows for achieving a standard of excellence in the architecture profession and for their significant contributions to the profession.

CoSci grads in high demand at jobsites throughout Texas

High demand for graduates of Texas A&M’s Department of Construction Science has led to a doubling of the department’s enrollment in just four years, said depatment head, Joe Horlen, in a KBTX-TV feature on construction industry jobs.

Class Acts: Former students share news with classmates

The College of Architecture encourages former students to submit news for its Class Acts reports featuring professional achievements, marriages, retirements, bucket list accomplishments or whatever else they care to share. See what others have been up to and share your own news.

Aggie Class of ’67 visits Langford during 50th reunion

Former Texas A&M architecture students from the Class of 1967 reminisced and rekindled friendships during a 2017 campus reunion marking the 50th anniversary of their graduation. A tour of the College of Architecture archives highlighted their visit.

Upon Further Review

Patrik Schumacher, center, and Mark Foster Gage, left, review student work.

Leading architects Schumacher, Gage review student projects

The college was abuzz during "Interface" April 21 when two of the globe's leading architects, Patrik Schumacher and Mark Foster Gage, visited campus to review student work in Langford A and continue their spirited debate at Rudder Theatre about public policy and design. At Langford, a fourth-floor studio was converted into a giant review space where the two architects publicly shared their thoughts on student projects created in several studios.